Except I don't think this is true of Ballmer when it came to "developers, developers, developers". I doubt Microsoft has willingly done anything to harm developers that use its products, certainly not for "profits next quarter". Sure, they deprecated some technologies (like Silverlight), but that was in response to market realities (like the iPhone and HTML5), and even then they are supported for years. All the various complaints lodged against Microsoft, such as Spolsky's "fire and motion", are more rationally explained by the vagaries of how technologies progress organically in large companies and in the industry in general.
That culture he instilled has been going on for enough time for him to realize that maybe it is time to reverse or change the policy. If he cared enough, they would have been looking and doing something about it.
Now as you say, would that have made the difference? It is hard to say...
